No sympathy for this devil
A revival of Ricky Gervais’ ‘Office’ guy David Brent yields squirms over laughs.
Nearly two decades after Ricky Gervais made him one of the more influential and cringe-worthy television characters of the 2000s with the BBC mockumentary series “The Office,” David Brent is back.
The inept, annoying and former middle manager at Britain’s Wernham Hogg paper company is now a lowlevel sales rep for the equally dreary cleaning products supplier Lavichem. But he has rock star aspirations, and a reality camera crew is there to catch every minute of the squirm-inducing climb toward a top he’ll likely never reach.
The 90-minute film, however, lacks the wit, timing and supporting cast that made “The Office” (co-created by Stephen Merchant) a breakthrough comedy about the absurdity of reality TV, and the numbing reality of office life. As a result, the film can feel as desperate as the attention-seeking Brent in its attempt to make us laugh at behaviors we’ve seen from him before.
In “Life on the Road,” Brent hasn’t changed much, except that he’s older and more insecure than he was 16 years ago. But the world has changed, and it’s a much crueler place for a walking social disaster like him.
Now, when Brent’s clumsy, pedestrian jokes miss the mark, his bullying, hostile co-workers are right there to remind him of what a waste of space he is. And in the modern office environment, HR is more likely to warn Brent about his inadvertently offensive remarks; even when he’s trying to be PC, Brent’s still as unwittingly racist and sexist as he was back when PC still meant “personal computer.”
A television camera crew that’s returned to do a followup show on the former reality star catches all of these humiliating scenarios and more as they document Brent’s futile efforts to become a successful singer-songwriter in between selling detergent, dish towels and tampons: “One size fits all …. No, it doesn’t, actually.”
He taps into his pension and vacation days to fund a three-week club tour with his group, Foregone Conclusion. Except he doesn’t have a band or followers, so he rents backing musicians, a tour bus and books gigs “on the road,” i.e. tiny venues that are never more than two hours away from his home base among the beige office parks of Slough, England.
And, yes, it’s as painfully awkward and embarrassing as it all sounds.
Unlike Brent’s days in “The Office,” where his discomfiting idiocy was offset by occasional glimpses of a more likable— or at least sympathetic— man, today’s Brent is a font of awkward behavior with little to no respite.
And with fewer redeeming moments, tolerating Brent is a lot less fun.
There’s the weird laugh, the gross boob jokes, the knowing glances into the camera by those around him who are exasperated by his pathological need to be accepted.
None of his former “Office” co-workers appear, so his wingman is now young rapper Dom Johnson, played by Doc Brown. “In some ways, we’re very alike, except he’s old and white and his music is terrible,” says Dom, who thinks he’s being kind when answering why he sticks with Brent and his dream of stardom.
The rock clichés here do add levity: “New Romantic, but modern. A bit Bublé, a bit David Essex,” is how Brent describes his musical style while packing a pair of maracas in his suitcase for the tour.
In song, his lyrics are a composite of every middleof-the-road rock number ever played on FM radio, just delivered by a guy who looks more like, well, a cleaning supplies salesman than a guitar god.
“I work so hard just to pay my bills,” he sings over a montage scene of life on the road. “I play any harder, yeah, life kills. Now I’m burning rubber on the M25. Got a crazy weekend, some of us might not make it out alive.” Cut to a shot of the band dining among seniors, in the generic buffet breakfast area, in a sterile, corporate hotel.
The paid session players in Foregone Conclusion make Brent follow behind the tour bus he’s paid for in his dumpy Vauxhall Insignia, ban him from the dressing room and refuse to hang out with him at the pub unless he pays them for that too.
However, there isn’t much of a payout for viewers, who suffer through Brent’s relentlessly desperate behavior. The sympathy we’re supposed to feel for him comes only toward the close of the film, and by then, it’s too late to laugh or to care.